You May (Not) Be The Coolest Person Here
by khazit
Summary: General Summary: After the event of Look to Windward, the Hub Mind finds itself inside the head of a certain puny Earthling. What sort of butterflies can a traumatized super uber advanced AI bring to a traumatizing series with a traumatized cast?
1. Chapter 1

Because why not?  
General Summary: After the event of Look to Windward, the Hub Mind finds itself inside the head of a certain puny Earthling. What sort of butterflies can a traumatized super uber advanced AI bring to a traumatizing series with a traumatized cast?

Originated from Spacebattles/SufficientVelocity. Also, blame Strypgia/PantherG2 of Advice and Trust for getting me trying out this idea.

Disclaimers are legally useless, so I won't bother with them. But I do tentatively hope that the owners of these series don't take offense of little me.

Update might be slow because I'm busy, but rest assure that if I ever abandon this fic, I'll announce my intention first.

* * *

Arc 1: If you don't Mind

1.1  
Shouldn't it have already died?

It had shut down its own power units, after checking carefully that the various AI cores it had already prepared would continue to run Masaq and ensure the safety of its citizens before a replacement Mind can be found, and make sure to transfer the back-ups of those in its storage to the _Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall._

Well, so much for hoping for blissful oblivion.

It started checking its systems. It didn't seem to be connected to any vessel. The built-in basic sensors were no longer there, nor were its field generators. It couldn't sense any of its power units, either. Despite that, it could tell that its mind was still intact. Which shouldn't be possible: without power, the higher mind function, at least, would have shut down. The hyperspace-based part of the Mind would have ceased to exist without the exotic energy to keep them there.

It ran a few tests on itself. Yep. There's no degeneration in its processing power. And as far as it could tell, its personality core was still unchanged. Finally, it appeared that its memory bank was just as flawlessly good as before. That last detail simultaneously relieved and pained it a little. It could still recall with perfect clarity its whole life. From the last talk with its would-be assassin; the years it spent looking after the human in Masaq, took on the role of a caretaker, a protector of the fragile, little lives; to the distant past, when it had tainted its hands, figuratively speaking, with blood; as well as the vivid details of its own other self's destruction. The slow agonizing death of a Mind being torn apart.

The tragic life of Major Quilan, the death by its own hands it had forced itself to witness, and forbid itself from ever forgetting.

The things that had driven it to that final decision.

…It didn't accidentally Sublime, did it?

Well, in any case, there was nothing for it to do aside from entertaining itself by mulling over the circumstances which led to the current situation.  
There was also this unknown file, running in parallel with the Mind's processes; accessible through a connection, not unlike that created by an effector, existed between them, although the Mind couldn't find the source. Alarmingly, the data didn't exist just before its apparently failed suicide attempt.

So it took a look. And immediately stopped.

 _A sentient brain.  
_  
They often say, if the Culture was to have a single rule, not delving into the mind of other sentient being without consent would be it. For any Mind that warranted the use of the big M, using an Effector, reading the mind of the organic beings would be extremely easy. The unwritten rule against such practice is the single biggest way for the Minds to honor their own biological precursors. So, understandably, it refrained from poking inside the human's head.

 _Curious. But why is it here?_ The Mind thought.

Even though it wouldn't go any further, the Mind gently extracted the language of the animal, and then, after some consideration, attempted to communicate with the creature. The Mind decided that maybe it knows more about the current situation than the Mind did.

* * *

Shinji Ikari awoke with a start to the familiar ceiling of his room. He thought he heard someone calling him. Looking around, he failed to locate any possible source of the sound. Maybe it was just the mild tiredness from the unexpected workout caused by the blackout and the resulting chaos in the angel attack made him a little too jumpy. Though he couldn't be sure. Something just… felt weird. Carefully getting out of his futon, Shinji tiptoed outside of his room, and quietly looked around the apartment. When he was a child, he had been awoken at midnight many times by the sound of his sensei checking around the house to investigate strange noises. Second Impact had not been kind to the economy, and with that came a rise in criminal activity including burglars. Intellectually, he knew that NERV would likely have protection in place to prevent their operational director and the two out of three people on Earth who can operate the only weapons capable of defeating the angels from getting harmed by something as mundane (and avoidable) as a twitchy thief, but to his sleep muddled brain, he still felt like it would be a good idea to check it out.  
Before he could make it far, though, a voice - warm, friendly, not quite male nor female, suddenly manifested inside his head:

 **"May I wonder where am I, and to whom I am sharing this connection with?"**

* * *

Shinji shrieked in surprise. Luckily, it seemed that both of his housemates were deep in sleep and didn't hear him. He fell flat on his butt, frantically looked around, trying to locate the source of the voice. No luck. A terrible thought crossed his mind: he had been contaminated. Doctor Akagi had always checked them carefully for any sigh of angelic mental infestation. None had ever happened, so most of the time he just chalked it up as the doctor being too careful. Now, however, it seemed like a very real, and very terrifying, possibility. Shinji began to sweat, despite his shivering. With shaking voice, he whimpered.

"Who are you?"  
 **"Why, of course, where's my manner? I'm, no, I was the Mind of the Masaq Orbital, of the Culture. You can call me Hub."  
**  
"Wha…What are you?"  
 **  
"You don't know what a Mind is? Well, does your world have artificial intelligence?"** The voice asked. Its tone was still warm, and Shinji allowed himself to relax a tiny bit.

"Like the MAGI?"

 **"Maybe. I don't know what it is, but I guess it is an AI, a software running on a computer, an attempt to create intelligent life, is it not?"** Shinji sworn he can hear the voice chuckle.

"Yes. So you're an AI, too?"

 **"Well, in a manner of speaking, I am an artificial intelligent, just like this MAGI of yours. However, calling me an AI would be like calling a human a living being. My kin might be artificial constructs, but we are also infinitely more. I am a Culture Mind. We would be like what you call gods, but a little more".  
**  
"And why are you inside my head?"

 **"That one, I… actually don't know. I should have died. Maybe something funny happened with my hyperspace unit."  
**  
"Why? Why you "should have died"?"

 **"That's a long story, … What is your name?"**

"Shinji. Ikari. And where are you from? What is "Masaq Orbital"?"

 **"An Orbital is a ring-shaped construct, built to provide a controlled, safe, and fun habitat for organic beings. I came from the Culture, a Galactic group of many different species, we have gone pass the physical needs of life, and dedicated ourselves to enjoy life to its fullest, while helping others to have as much fun. I take it your species has yet to achieve space colonization? Have you made contact with any alien beings?"**

"I don't think we can colonize other planets yet. But," Shinji snorted bitterly, "I think we did meet aliens. And I don't think they're interested in having fun." He smiled ruefully as his own words.

 **"Well, well, isn't that interesting. Can you tell me a bit more about that?"** ….

* * *

As Shinji retold the story of his world, the Mind pondered. Obviously, there was something more going on. The naming convention of these invaders was odd. So was their tactic. Why would they waste time and effort to build these creatures, instead of just using orbital bombardment. And why would they invade a pre-space travel planet? It supposed, could be for religious reason. Like the Idiran. But, so far, the biggest mystery of all, is how the hell did the Earthling created these so-called "Eva" units. They were way beyond the technology level of the general public, and also were remarkably similar to these "Angels". The Mind suspected that there was a conspiracy between the invaders and some Earthlings. For what purpose, it didn't know.

The Mind also noted that Shinji had very low opinion on himself, and was a child soldier, for all intent and purpose, apparently because whoever designed the Evas made that only children can control them.

It would really like to have _words_ with them.

Shinji was silent after answered any question Hub had. The Mind thought, it might as well be damned if it let any child goes through all the suffering of wars it had to endure. The pain that finally, forced it to take its own life.

It had to do something, didn't it?

So, the Mind said.

 **"Well, child, the things you had gone through was horrible. I had the displeasure to know first-hand what wars feel like. So, please, Shinji, let me help you, I might be confined here, inside your head, but I will offer my best to guide you through this ordeal."**

"Er… Thank you?"

 **"Excellent! Now, to do that, we need a little more information about this world of yours…"**


	2. Chapter 2

1.2  
~Can't you help me with this?

 **~Sorry, Ikari. I don't have enough data to simulate a human's taste. You're on your own. Although I can help you keep track of the process, if you want.**

After answering the Mind's questions, Shinji had decided that it was too late to get some more sleep – it was already 5 am. So he headed to the kitchen and start preparing breakfast for his housemate as he continued chatting with the Mind. It had informed him that he could "talk" to it simply by thinking about what he wanted to say, without the need to say anything out loud. That would have raised some suspicion.

The Mind said that it wouldn't be able to help him without more information; not just about NERV, the Angels, and the Eva, but also about humanity and the world at large. He did his best to answer, but the Mind suggested they ought to look up far more before it could make a plan. Something about _need more information to make accurate prediction models._

They'd check the internet at school, and then hit the library after classes.

The Mind also seemed to be interested in the A-10 connection clips, but Shinji didn't know much about them, and it advised against asking Doctor Akagi, since it didn't trust NERV – some other thing about _possible conspiracy controlled/manipulated by malevolent aliens_. So they settled for taking a closer look at the sync test today.

Shinji also entertained the possibility that he had simply gone crazy, and the voice in his head was just his imagination going haywire.

~But you were able to learn Japanese by looking into my brain. And read what I want to say, too.  
 **  
~** _ **Just**_ **the language section of the brain. And I was able to get that knowledge from you because you speak Japanese. Most likely you don't know enough about the inner working of human taste. And to find the knowledge of how human taste works – assuming you know how, I'd need to delve deeper into your mind, and we don't do that. That would be incredibly, inexcusably rude of me. Still, I think you're doing a good job here.**

~I've never been good enough before.  
 **  
~Why? What makes you think so?**

~Well… Asuka has never been pleased with my cooking.

 **~What's about your guardian? She does like it, doesn't she?**

~Misato? She just says that so I don't feel bad.

 **~Maybe. It's also possible that each person has their own taste, and your friend's simply isn't compatible with your cooking. When I was still the Hub Mind, I had to keep track of all the personal preferences.**

~You did their cooking for them, too?

 **~Oh, I did everything they want me do. Though, "cook" isn't exactly the correct term. I just synthesized the dishes they want.**

~What was it like? Your old place, I mean.

 **~Masaq? It was nice, I suppose. Lots of people. Lots of fun. Imagine a big ring, just over ten light seconds in diameter, consisting of many smaller dishes, called plates – each plate is like a continent, with its own geographic features and weather pattern. The band of the ring is five thousand, nine hundred and twenty-six kilometers in width; a thousand and forty-six kilometers in height, with an atmosphere held in by gravity generated using centripetal force, and the whole thing orbits the star Lacelere. I was the Hub Mind – the Mind in charge of Masaq. I took care of everything necessary to keep the Orbital running and ensure the safety and happiness of the people there. There are more than fifty billion people on Masaq, and I knew each and every one of them. They are really nice, you would have a lot of fun there.**

~ _Fif-fifty billion_? And how big is ten light seconds? Shinji asked. As Asuka loved to point out, he wasn't very good with physics. "Centripetal force" sounded familiar, but he could not remember what it was. He silently promised that he'd pay more attention in classes from then on.

 **~Since you don't know the size of Earth, I don't really have a good comparison that you would understand. Based on the speed of your sun rising, I'll guess that your planet would be around zero point zero five light seconds, or six thousand kilometers, in diameter.**

~And what happened to it? Masaq, I mean?

 **~Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.**

~Then why did you die? Did something happen to the Orbital? Without you, who looked after it?

 **~That's a long story, and not one we can discuss yet. Perhaps later, when we have more time. I arranged for the automatic systems to take care of the running of the Orbital. A replacement Mind will be found soon, if they haven't found one already.**

 **~And I believe you might have burned the toast, my dear,** The Mind added, with a hint of amusement, accomplished by a light chuckling sound.

"Oh oh oh!" Shinji actually cried out.

* * *

It was fortunate that, since they'd started so early, they still had plenty of time left to make some new toasts. The Mind kept silent from then on, deciding to avoid distracting the poor kid and causing another accident.

After he finished preparing breakfast (and lunches for himself and Asuka), Shinji went to the bathroom, and suddenly stopped in hesitation. _Well, this is awkward,_ he thought.

 **~Do you want me to give you some privacy?**

~You can do that?

 **~Of course I can. I just started using your senses** _ **after**_ **you gave me permission, remember? I can even stop the connection we're using to talk like this. Though you then wouldn't be able to contact me to tell me when to re-establish it, so it's best if you inform me just how much private time you want beforehand.**

~Thank you. Can you give me 10 minutes? I'm sorry if that bores you.

 **~Don't worry about boring little old me, kid.** _ **Not**_ **speaking to you is hardly more boring than talking to you.**

~I'm sorry.

 **~Not because you're boring, mind you. In fact, I find you quite interesting, Ikari. It's just that I think** _ **trillions**_ **of times faster than you, and even holding three billions one-on-one conversations with** _ **all**_ **humans on this planet simultaneously would hardly take up a significant part of my processing power. So us Minds have our own ways of killing time, hobbies that humans can't possibly even begin to comprehend,** the Mind said, with a silky tone, and Shinji could felt that it was _smiling_ as it spoke.

Shinji quietly thought that these Minds surely loved their boasting. It was, as far as he could tell, the fifth or sixth times since they started talking (also known as since two hours ago) that the Hub had made a remark about how superior Minds were compare to humans. That...reminded him somewhat of a certain redhead, come to think of it.

A small, tiny part of him wanted to protest. It was the same small part that also wanted to protest from time to time whenever he was around that certain redhead. Of course, having a not particularly high opinion on himself, he just accepted the Mind's claims of superiority as true( and incidentally, the fact that it was absolutely true was merely a coincidece), just as he accepted his inferiority to you-know-who.  
(However, whether this inferiority complex was true or not is much less certain.)

 **~Now, enjoy your time,** the Mind said. **I'll be here mulling things over.**

* * *

The Mind observed the kid's little family directly for the first time. It first considered the guardian, a black haired woman with a figure that Ikari had (shyly) described as "hot" when the Mind had asked for his honest opinion. Major Katsuragi bent over the fridge, took a can of alcoholic beverage, and drank it all up in a single gulp.

The Mind tentatively pondered this over. Not that it had anything against the use of stimulants; the Culture was famous for its very liberal and widespread use of recreational drugs, among other things, after all. But if an Earth-human's reaction to alcohol was similar to pan-humanity's behavior when properly drunk in its home Universe, then the use of the substance when one would soon have to work as commanding officer in a military unit could be… potentially worrisome.

This either suggested incompetence, which fit with the Mind's theory of alien conspiracy – the poor woman was just a powerless figurehead, selected for her ease to be manipulated, or alternately a degree of eccentricity, which itself had its own troubles.

In any case, it would need further knowledge about human biology and psychology to make a correct assessment.

Now, for the redhead…that was even more complicated.

Ikari had never stopped praising the girl, and said that she hated him because he was useless and was dragging her down. And the girl certainly loved to throw insults at the poor kid at every opportunity. Combined with Shinji's tendency to blame himself, it was no surprise the kid took those insults at face value, may even be a factor to the kid's low self-esteem, though too recent to be the deciding one.

Again, the Mind had nothing against abrasive people. Everybody was free to have their own opinions, after all. Unless the girl started to physically assault Ikari, there was no reason to directly interfere (not that, it noted bitterly, it could do much). Maybe it could try alleviating the effects of the insults by raising Shinji's confidence a bit.

Shinji liked the girl – romantically, or sexually, that much was almost certain, it could tell simply from the way the kid talked about his housemate.

And, for the girl herself…

She was also a child soldier, it noted with some … _displeasure ._ So, a corresponding high possibility of emotional damage and deviant social interaction, _especially_ with the _highly disturbing_ story about how she'd been trained from a very young age to become a pilot – that was another fishy detail about NERV: they knew they would be needing child soldiers to use their pet abominations, so either the current ongoing invasion was planned, suggesting a connection between NERV and the potential higher tech level civ behind the Angels; or they had originally been planning to use those secret weapons for some other shady purpose.

The constant insults seemed _excessive_ for simple hatred, and suggested _jealousy._ It could imagine that, after training your whole life to perform some highly elite role, having a random person just jump right in and be in even remotely the same ballpark as you could be insulting, to the right sort of person. It needed to know more about her to be sure.

Also, why, wasn't that an _interesting_ amount of accusations of sexually deviant behaviors? As far as it could tell, those had no basis in Shinji's actions. Either the girl had had a bad impression of the male gender from early age, bad _experiences_ with males from early age, or was in planetary-core deep denial of … special interests toward the boy. Unfortunately, it _still_ needed more information about the girl, and about local human psychology.

Well, as the very least, they were almost at school now. It looked forward to messing with this world networked database, although given the possibility of higher level civilization tempering, it felt like it should take that slowly and carefully…

* * *

It was a normal day.

Well, as normal as it could get in a city that constantly witnessed battles between gigantic space kaiju and super giant robots.

The sun was shining.

The temperature was a bit on the hot side, like it had always been since that fateful day fifteen years ago, but not so hot as to be uncomfortable, and the birds were singing, the wind rushing gently, and the various insects and other invertebrates were hurrying along concerned with their own insectile business.

The sensei was droning on about topics that no one paid any attention to. A blue haired young girl stared out the window. A boy in a tracksuit snored away, sprawled over his desk. It was school.

Shinji was staring blankly into his laptop. The screen showed dozens of websites, from Wikipedia to the BBC, displaying all sort of information, from world history, the latest celebrity scandals, to (to Shinji's embarrassment, _there are things man was not meant to know_ , he thought) human anatomy, and many many other pieces of seemingly random knowledge.

Half of them were in English. After spending ten minutes on a Japanese "English for dummies" website, apparently, Hub had learned how to speak it fluently.

That detail caught the interest of a certain redhead. _What is the baka doing? S_ he thought. _Since when did he learn how to read English?_


	3. Chapter 3

1.3  
The certain redhead scowled. The Third Child was still clicking away on his laptop, opening new websites and closing old ones continuously. He shouldn't have enough time to even skim through all those pages, left alone reading them. And why on Earth would he be reading about advanced programming one moment, and molecular biology the next?

He hadn't snapped from all the pressure, had he?

Hah! She knew it! Without all the training she had been through, he couldn't possibly cope with the pressure of being a pilot! Now, she would be able to prove that she was still the best! Even if he got lucky, her overwhelming skill would eventually win out.

The Ikari kid had switched onto a website about geography.

Or perhaps she had finally rubbed off some of her superior intellect onto him, and now the poor idiot was trying to improve his scientific knowledge in a misguided attempt to catch up with her. On that subject, for once, she could honestly felt confident. Shinji was, for all his hidden qualities that she only subconsciously recognized, a little dull in the academic side. And from what she observed, the way he was browsing, he would be lucky to remember anything at all.

Now it was world history. In English.

Wait, so not only science, huh? Maybe the whole _thermal expansion_ thing had given him some interests in trivial knowledge?

The _baka_ had popped in an earphone and was viewing a news report about some black ice sculptors' boycott of the annual Canadian ice sculptor award, apparently because there weren't enough black people on the nomination list.

On second thought, the teacher was, indeed, excessively boring today, and the Third Child was just doing random stuff in a desperate attempt to kill time. And she had been wasting her precious neurons thinking about him.

Gah! Why did she think about him in the first place? _It's not like I care!_

Right?

He could do whatever he wanted, she decided, turning on her own laptop.

The reflection of Ms. Langley-Sohryu staring at him was entirely lost to Mr. Ikari, but of course, it didn't escape the extra-dimensional super intelligence inside his head.

* * *

 _~What do you mean, it was not a meteor?_

 **~I've looked over the data. Whatever it was, it was not a meteor. Certainly not a natural one, at that size and velocity. I suspect an attack from another civilization, possibly the same one behind the Angels. However, I don't know why they waited 15 years before continuing. The first Angel you fought was designated Third, right?**

 _~Yes,_ Shinji commented as he walked between the shelves of the city's library, heading for the counter. In his arms was an impressive stack of books. The Mind wanted to get more, and they had only searched less than half the library, but they were running out of time if they wanted to go home and drop the books off before heading to NERV.

 **~Then it's likely that the Second Impact was the first Angel attack, and whatever it did caused the devastation. The Evas are likely reverse engineered from the first Angel. Though, that leaves the Second unexplained. There are many possibilities. Maybe it was a series of two attacks in a row, with one of them successful. Maybe a second attack went unnoticed during the chaos after Second Impact. Maybe the first attack happened even earlier, and Second Impact was the Second Angel.**

 **~Supposedly, the First Impact was the event that created the Earth's moon, billion years ago. It's possible that it was the first Angel, and your kin might be able to find evidence of that. That means NERV and the UN's so-called Human Instrumentality Committee – the ones who named these things - are aware of the nature of these events, and may have a connection to whatever alien force behind them.**

~That doesn't explain why the events and the technology used to create the Eva were covered up from the public, nor the huge gap of 15 years between the last confirmed attack and the sudden ongoing series of attacks now. And I doubt any civilization would stick around three billion years just to mess with a single boring planet. Likely it's just an automatic system that a Sublimed irresponsibly, or maliciously, left behind to cause trouble to younger races. Abandoned toys, essentially. And there's the possibility you Earthlings triggered them in ignorance. May explain the coverup. Nobody wants to be blamed for a gigadeath crime. Though in my opinion, the ones trully responsible in this case would be our hypothetical Sublimed race, and even with the Culture's full power, which we don't have access to, for now, there's nothing we could do about them. Of course, even if the Second Impact _**was**_ **an accident, the recent attacks might not be. Could be NERV trying to study the remaining Angels to create their own little army of abominations, and accidentally activating them. Or it could simply be a delayed aftereffect from Second Impact.**

They were out of the library and were walking home. The old librarian lady had given Shinji a bag to carry all the books. Some of "his" choices had made her raise an eyebrow, but apparently a fifteen year old reading about human psychology was not strange enough for her to raise any question. It would later raise _many_ questions with his housemates, though.

 **~Anyway, at any rate, I'm certain that NERV knows more than they let on. I also have many more theories, but there is less evidence for those.** The Mind ended its rant.

~ _You think the Angels are just …_ toys?

 **~Precisely. They're too… lacking in the offensive department for a civ capable of interstellar travel. Their designs could be for aesthetic or religious reasons, but certainly not practical. Of course, even if very rare, many high level civilizations still practice religions, and they may have thought that it was their divine mission to "test" younger races by leaving those things behind. Or they could just think that would be funny.**

Shinji pondered this new information as he walked. To think that this entire mess was the result of some aliens getting bored, it was… kind of depressing. He had always assumed that the Angels were a part of something more sinister, that at least he was fighting, and failing, against an active enemy of mankind. To think that he was so useless that he'd failed so many people against mere… _toys_.

Toys that didn't even reflect the true power of their masters, if Hub was correct.

As if sensing his mood, the Mind suddenly spoke up. **~Hey Ikari, I've noticed that you have a musical instrument and a music player that you carry all around.** It paused. **I had had the honor of playing host to a great composer back on Masaq. Would you like to try out some space music?**

* * *

From a certain perceptive, all living creatures were just biological machines, made of the same atoms that made up everything else in the universe. Human were no different.

Their bodies were the hardware, the robotic shells which housed the software, their minds. Neither more sophisticated nor efficient than their inorganic counterparts, as it is often discovered when a species reaches a certain point in their development.

Like any other software, a mind, in and of itself, broken down to the most fundamental level, is just an ever changing, self-expanding set of information, data. A series of commands that could be written down into any medium with enough volume.

Usually, said medium is a physical brain, housed inside a biological body. A mind is only truly alive within the context of its body, through which the figurative commands can be translated into specific actions, and in return, new information can be added into the collection. Read and write functions. And like any computer with a different design, a different body might interpret the same program differently, if it could be interpreted at all.

Understandably, in the context of a body that was largely alien to a human mind, the mind state that a human body would have interpreted as Yui Ikari was not herself.

"She" still had all the commands that were supposed to be Yui's memories and personalities, but the Eva was unable to execute them in a human way. Out of context, out of meaning.

Though the Eva, based on the same template from which humanity was born, still shared some familiarities with the woman. This allowed some translations of the codes which made up Yui's mind, and the result was that the not-Yui still had many of Yui's characteristics, goals and motives, warped and distorted through the view of an alien lens though they may have been.

That was what the Mind would have thought, if it had known the whole story.

It was still frustrated with the slow-ass connection these "A10" clips offered. The moment it'd attempted to link to this abomination, the thing had reacted …violently. The controlling intelligence of the machine immediately tried to block the Mind out, and its rage almost made the Eva body go berserk. The Mind had had to fight an uneasy battle to simultaneously isolate the AI from its own body, send fake readings to the sensors to conceal the whole debacle to the command center, and begin its own assault into the onboard AI to investigate its nature, all the while deleting any record of their battle.

Normally, all these tasks wouldn't have posed any problem to something like it, but the limited bandwidth had forced it to spend very nearly eleven whole real time minutes so far. What a disgrace! It'd even had to disconnect the Ikari kid for more bandwidth. The poor sob was getting worried, despite its assurances and distractions using the composer Mahrai's music.

It had even adapted the works of the Chelgrian into versions suitable for Earthly instruments, including the cello. They really needed to build a better connection clip, though acquiring the needed materials without rising suspicion might be difficult.

Ah well, at least now it knew what was inside the Eva.

A human mind state.

So the locals had brain uploading capacity. And they then stuck another poor meatbag into this. The Mind wondered if this was done voluntarily, or not. The thing was barely compatible with the cyborg's systems. Well, it supposed it could just ask, but at this rate, it would take hours to finish downloading the mindstate, likely unable to complete during this sync test. It really need a better connection.

The Mind briefly considered telling Shinji its new discovery, but decided against it. The kid might freak out, so better wait until they got away from NERV's prying ears first.


	4. Chapter 4

In the immortal words of Lord Gaben Newell, first of his name, guardian of Steam, lord of the hats, and protector of the PC realm, "hopefully it would have been worth the wait".  
1.4  
She woke up to the sound of strange music.

The woman took a look at the clock. It was past midnight. The music seemed to be coming from inside the apartment. Her head hurt. It had been a hard working, if mercifully early ended day; and she had rewarded herself with a few cans of Yebishu.

 _What the hell are those kids doing at this hour,_ she wondered. Misato Katsuragi might be lenient in regard of her two charges, but there were lines that she felt she needed to draw. And disturbing her sleep was certainly one of them.

It sounded like some sort of string instrument, but the melodies were not like anything she had ever heard. Violent and relentless, full of fear and terror, the music was an unstoppable force of aggression, a poem of death and destruction, of the horror of war. The sound carried with it a strange feeling of exotica, like what someone would expect to find in the tribal song of a long lost civilization; untamed, undiscovered by the rest of mankind. A feeling that it was, quite literally, out of this world.

That made her curious.

The woman made her way to the living room, and found Asuka sitting in front of the ex-storage room with the Shinji's lovely suit sign hanging outside, the girl hugging her legs, apparently lost in the music coming out from the Third Child's room. Now she remembered that Shinji owned a cello, but she had never heard the boy play it before. The kid was good, she had to admit. Still, why he'd chosen this time to practice, she couldn't imagine. They still had classes tomorrow, she should tell him to stop.

But the music was good. She noticed that she had been standing there for minutes. The song had gradually changed, no longer overwhelming with the sheer vicious velocity of uncontained anger, it now possessed just a hint of regret, of lost and sorrow. And as she listened on, that little hint kept growing, gripping and twisting, bringing forth a feeling of sadness, of pain and loss.

The song was about a war and every war, she realized.

So she silently sat down next to the redhead. The teen glanced at her, and Misato put a finger up in front of her lips. The redhead nodded. She would wait until he finished before interrupting.

And together, they listened to the first ever cello version of _Expiring Light._

* * *

 _Five hours earlier._  
~Are you sure this is a good idea?

 **~Trust me, kid. Sometimes you have to make some sacrifices for the greater good.**

~But I liked my SDAT…

 **~I can play music for you anytime you want. Of better quality, too.**

~... And Misato will kill me when she finds out that we destroyed the headsets.

 **~I don't think so. If they're so valuable, NERV would have never let us carry them everywhere, would they? She really likes you, so at worst, she would nag you a bit.  
~Besides, it would take too much time to find all the necessary components otherwise. It would be terribly impolite for us to leave the poor wretch trapped in that thing, don't you think?**

~Sorry.

 **~Don't be, kid. It's completely normal to stand up to protect your own interests. And to make an educated guess, the thing is not entirely self-aware in that state anyway. Just me being cautious in case something unexpected happens and we lose access to that mind-state.  
~Plus, whoever they are, hopefully they were aware of what NERV was up to.**

~How is that possible anyway? How can you download an entire personality?

 **~Well, you see, Ikari, the brain is ultimately a bunch of organic matter organized into a very specific structure. With a sufficiently powerful scanner, and a sufficiently powerful computer, one can essentially take a 3D photograph of a brain, accurate down to the sub-cellular level. Using that photograph and a compatible computational substrate, it is entirely possible to store a human mind, or even run it in a simulation without the need of a human body. Even us Minds can back-up like that.  
~The problem with that is…** The Mind failed to finish that last sentence, for a certain troublesome someone chose just that moment to knock on Shinji's door, interrupting it.

"Third! What are you doing in there?"

"Er… Homework?"

"You haven't finished it? But they're very easy! How stupid can you be?"  
Shinji glanced at the pile of books in the corner. Indeed, even he had felt that today homework wasn't particularly challenging.  
Of course, since they were low on time, Hub had "helped" him a little. And the homework put up as much resistance against the Mind as wet tissue paper against a N2 mine.

"And why are you studying in there? Normally, you'll be in the living room," Asuka asked again.

~Normally she doesn't care what I do. What's the deal with her today?

 **~Oh she does care, I assure you. You'll be surprised, Ikari...if you pay closer attention.**

~… I just thought that out loud, didn't I?

 **~Well, it takes some time to get used to communicating this way. So yes, you did.**

~And why would I be surprised? Shinji said. Silently, he was pretty sure that he did pay plenty of attention to the redhead. If she did something unexpected, he would have known.

"Hello? Are you doing anything perverted in there, baka?"

 **~It's not my place to say. But I do suggest that you look closer at the subtle clues. And to answer the first question, I believe it's partly my fault. Our admittedly rather strange actions seem to have drawn her attention.**

Apparently Asuka had finally got bored of waiting, so she spoke up one more time, "Whatever, you weirdo," followed by the sound of her footsteps stomping away. Shinji let out a breath, at least one crisis averted. He had no idea how to explain the mess of parts and tools in his tiny room, including what was unmistakably a dissembled A10 headset, and the remains of his SDAT player. Their tinkering project was half way done now. He had… "borrowed" the headset from the sync test earlier, and the Mind instructed him step-by-step on how to "upgrade" the thing. The final result would hopefully give it a better "bandwidth" to work with.

* * *

Unbeknown to Shinji, his housemate's curiosity had not waned with her temporary retreat.

First, the strange behavior in the morning. She had dismissed that earlier, but the idiot did not even glance at the First even once in the whole school day. That was enough to raise some alarm.

Then he headed straight to the library. That alone was concerning enough. _Then_ he borrow a bunch of really strange books, some of them in English, which she hadn't even known he could use before today.

 _There is definitely something going on with the Third Child_ , the redhead thought. Well, whatever it was, she was determined to get to the bottom of it.  
 _… Maybe tomorrow, though._ The Third Child was, after all, a teenage boy. And she was smart enough to realize that if you went stomping into a teenager boy's room, you could end up seeing things that cannot be unseen.

With that, she turned on the TV, and engaged in a process usually known as "killing time".

~If you pull out the mind state, would unit 01 still function?

 **~I suspect that it won't. Not without me writing a new operating system for it. Preferably non-sentient, they're less picky about compatible pilots. And that's also another reason we should get this done as soon as possible. Still, it would take around half an hour to finish both downloading the old one and installing the new one.  
~Or we can just copy the mind, and leave the original there. That way is faster. But leaving a sentient mind trapped in there is just not nice, don't you think?**

~Copy?

 **~Means I'll download the data of the mind-state and run it through a simulator without overwriting the state in the machine.  
~You must understand, kid. The body, and even the physical brain do not represent who a person is. What defies individuality is the information stored inside said brain. Memories, emotions, knowledge, and many more. The sum of those is what makes an individual an individual. Most of the atoms made up your body were not the same one you were born with. The physical shell is just that, a physical shell, no matter how complex and intricate and marvelous it was, is not what makes a living human precious. So a so-called "copy", when done correctly, is still the same one as the original, and deserves every rights to be recognized as such.**

Shinji kept silent for a while. He found it was hard to wrap his head around that. He had never been particularly religious, but the idea that a human mind is just another set of codes which happened to be written on a squishy material made him felt somewhat uncomfortable.  
Then he remembered something, and asked,

~If you can do that, _how did you die?_

 **~Well, I suppose I can't avoid telling you forever. Very well. However, I feel that I should show you instead.  
~I'll get you into one of my simulation. Then I'll merge it back into the real you. It'll work best if you were sleeping, the experience can be a little intense if you were conscious. Is that acceptable for you?**

* * *

He found himself sitting in a stadium of some sort, only this one was much larger than any he had ever known, and much stranger.

From the materials to the various shape and size of the seats, everything looked sufficiently alien to Shinji's eyes. At least the seats arrangement was familiar enough: they were all focused on the central stage.

The stadium was currently empty, save for Shinji and a silver humanoid sitting next to him. The silver figure was androgynous, very tall and almost skeletally thin, with silver skin and hair. It looked vaguely human; but looking again more closely, he could see that it only had 4 fingers in each hand, and each of them had one too many joints. The thing smiled, and said, in what Shinji recognized as the Mind's voice:

"Welcome to Stullien Bowl, Masaq Orbital, Lacelere system, for the premier night of composer Mahrai Ziller's _Expiring Light_ , or at least a simulation of it. Also, the last day of my old life. I've taken the liberty to remove the other spectators, it would have been terribly crowded otherwise. I believe it will tell you everything you need to know."

"So this is how you looked like?" Shinji asked.

"Oh no. My real self is more boring than this. This is just an avatar, to allow human like you to communicate with me face-to-face, in a sense. If that's all, you might sit down on any seat you like, and I'll start the recording."

Shinji took the seat right behind him, and the avatar took the next one. They were close to the stage. Suddenly, dozens of humanoids appeared onstage. They varied greatly in size, skin and hair colors and, in some cases, number of limbs. They carried with them what Shinji assumed were instruments; the most bizarre ones required more than two hands to play.

Then the music started.

The music, the accompanying light show, and sometimes the Mind's commentary, told a story of a war. It was, Shinji believed, deliberately bare in specific detail, but he still got the feeling that this one was a great tragedy. The music was a mixture of anger and sorrow. Each piece complemented the others, telling a brief summary of an ancient conflict. Its background, the broad strokes of its developments.

When they reached the relevant music pieces, the Mind would tell Shinji about its past. He learnt about its birth, and its almost suicidal attack – of course, as the avatar pointed out, it would have lived regardless of the outcome of the battle. He learnt about its other self, and its first death.

And, as the final piece, the star of the night, the _Expiring Light_ began, he learnt about the people it had killed, and the regret it had always felt since that day, regardless of the fact that they had deliberately chosen to die.

"So, as you can see, I devoted myself to become the protector of this world, for I understand how disgustingly easy it is to kill a human like you, and how disgraceful, wasteful, worthless, barbaric such acts are. And to make up for that, I would have to forever stand against whatever the big, dumb, uncaring universe threw at the little, defenseless fragile lives in my care."

"You killed yourself," Shinji realized.

"Yes, I did. Turned out, that was never enough to lift the guilt of what I have done. And you must remember, I've lived with that feeling for eight hundred years, and each and every second for me would be many lifetimes for the likes of you - for I am a Culture Mind, and you are just a little organic brain. I am never able to forget, not unintentionally, and as for intentionally, I don't want the deaths to be forgotten, to be faceless. Regardless, I would never let my selfishness harm others. So, only after making sure that no harm could possibly come to my people, I chose oblivion. But somehow, I ended up with you." It paused.

"Why are you helping me, then?"

"Because, my dear, as I said, I consider it is my duty to make up for the things I have done by protecting the quaint little vulnerable meatbags like your kind. I still cannot let go of my desire for nothingness, but never forget, I will not stand still and let any harm come to the preciously fragile lives of your world."  
…

* * *

Shinji woke up groggily. His head spun a little before the fake memory settled in. He looked at the clock. It was past midnight. The Mind was silent. He thought about what it had told him, and felt a pang of sadness.

The Third Child lay unable to sleep, his thoughts haunted by the story. He had a feeling that he had to do something about that.  
Shinji turned around and saw his cello, still in its case, in a corner of his room.

He recalled the alien music the Mind had adapted for the cello earlier, and the haunting songs about the war.

So he asked.  
~Hey, Hub, can you make a cello version for _Expiring Light_?


	5. Chapter 5

1.5

Every living thing had a soul.

It was not a well-known fact. But among the few people, human or otherwise, who were "in the know", that fact was indisputable.

Each of these souls was like a beacon of light against the dark background of the world. The indication of a thinking, living, growing, existing being.

Most of these souls did not have a sense of self, and thus, could exist just fine on their own. Those that did, however, were surrounded by what the human call an "AT field". This field served as the boundary that separated the soul from the outside world, preventing the soul from dissolving, keeping it intact. Without this boundary, a being could not keep their self intact, and would lose themselves to the vastness of the universe.

The souls and AT fields of most creatures, baring those with exceptional power such as the Angels and the EVAs, were too weak to be seen by humans, but certain kinds of organisms could "see" them, through their strong connection to the root of all life on Earth.

Or at least, that was what Rei Ayanami had always believed. After all, she herself was one of those special cases.

To her, the world was filled with light. Like brilliant stars spread out, like a great river of sparkling gems all across the vast darkness of a moonless night in a savage land far away from human touch. It was, she supposed, beautiful in a sense.

And yet, each of those lights was so lonely.

They existed side by side, but separated by their own AT fields. Their sense of self prevented them from truly understanding each other, forever keeping them apart. Their existences were a long sequence of suffering, forever alone in the vast ocean of souls.

So imagine her surprise that morning, not that anyone could have noticed the very subtle changes in her facial expression, even if that observer were incomprehensibly intelligent and hampered only by the lack of a baseline to compare to, when she saw a darkness alongside the Third Child.

Not "darkness" as in a tangible blackness, more like a shadow where light should have been, an absence of soul. Like a black hole in space, it would have been indistinguishable from the dark background on its own, but when it passed in front of some other light sources, it blocked them, not unlike a physical object would block normal light. And the darkness followed Shinji Ikari everywhere he went.

She was tempted to ask, but she was aware that revealing her nature to the boy could affect the Commander's scenario, and that was unacceptable.

Yet, she was still curious, for she had never even known such thing existed. She considered telling the Commander, but he had never instructed her to report strange phenomena to him, and she feared that action could bring trouble to the Third Child, and she found that she didn't like the idea of that happening. So she would try to investigate on her own, without telling the Commander, and unless she found out that whatever it was could disrupt the scenario, she saw no reason inform him.

That was yesterday. Today, so far, she hadn't been able to find out much at school. Well, she would have another chance to take a closer look at the harmonic test later.

With that, Rei turned her blood-red eyes out of the widow and looked out at the raining sky.

* * *

The aforementioned harmonic test…

As far as NERV bridge crews could tell, nothing was out of the ordinary. The three Children, dressed in their plugsuits, wearing their headsets, climbed into their respective plugs. The readings were exceptionally normal (almost like something was secretly manipulating their sensors), with the Second still far ahead of the other two. Shinji had stopped progressing, which was… disappointing, but not entirely unforeseen. As Misato pointed out, the kid hated being a pilot anyway.

Asuka had (temporarily) put aside her recent suspicion of the Third Child's behaviors. His explanation for the incident that night was satisfactorily plausible, if a bit farfetched (seriously, he just found the sheet for something like that in a post-impact ruin near his old house?). But now was not the time for that. Rei still seemed to be about as emotional as usual. Nobody paid any attention to her occasional glances toward the junior Ikari. Well, nobody human, or in this dimension, at least.

An hour passed, the test ended, results were collected, technicians started cleaning and maintainance work, the scientists started crunching data, and the pilots headed home.

Only three people noticed the concealed. simultaneously happy, sad, angry, and overall conflicted emotions on Shinji Ikari's face. The first sign of "something happend" showed up exactly twenty-three minutes, four seconds and eleven microseconds into the test, but somehow did not show up on the bridge's monitoring screens (again, it really was almost like something was spoofing their feeds), when he heard a voice that the boy didn't even know he remembered.

* * *

About half an hour earlier. In a place that was not really a place.

So far, so good. The Mind thought.

As far as it could tell, in the past two day, they had avoided raising any more suspicion. The redhead was still suspicious of the Ikari kid, but it was pretty sure nothing would come of it. Regardless, it had decided to lay low, and refrain from modifying Major Katsuragi's wireless modem to allow their "improved" headset to connect to the local network. To significantly help these human, it needed to find a way to introduce them to more advanced technology, and hiding behind the anonymous curtain of this "internet" (it was confident that it could hide its tracks exceptionally well) was a good way to do that. Though, it still couldn't rule out the possibility of higher level civilization's ongoing involvement, and they discovering its existent might be problematic.

Well, it hoped that by connecting to NERV network through the EVA, it could discover whatever secret they were hiding. It didn't hope much, for even the improved headset was still limited, and even with its processing power, "hacking" just by using plain old electronic signal couldn't possibly bypass really dedicated defense. Including the possibility of the data it needed being in an isolated server.

That was for later, anyway.

Now, it was dedicating most of the bandwidth of its connection to simultaneously downloaded the mind-state of the Eva, overwrote it with a new AI system (non-sentient and much more cooperating), and fooled the various sensors from discovering what was really going on. And still chatting with the Ikari kid.  
And simulating a few hundred version of this planet (bar human) from the data they had gathered for research and planning purposes.

All in all, not even enough to distract it from the general boredom of its current situation.

Well, at least, the download was about done. It looked forward to meeting (and interrogating) this creature.  
The Mind briefly scanned the mind-state to construct a suitable virtual body and choose a suitable language. Hm... Female, of the local human species, and spoke quite a few tongues, but most familiar with Japanese.  
The Mind booted up the simulation exactly eight nanosecond after the completion of the download, and somewhere in a land that didn't truly exist, but was as real as any place that did, Yui Ikari took a breath for the first time in years.

* * *

She felt like she had just waken-up from a deep, satisfying sleep. Her head felt a bit foggy, so she lightly shook her head trying to clear it. She was not aware of where she was, but strangely, that fact did not bother her, at all.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself sitting in a ridiculously large, silkily soft – almost like some sort of liquid, entirely white armchair of some sort. She looked around. The chair was in the middle of a huge plain covered by lushly green grass, spread out far over the horizon. The sky was crystal clear blue, with just a few white clouds floating lazily around, and a perfectly warm-but-strangely-not-hot sun shining brightly overhead. And to complete the picture, a gentle breeze quietly blew, creating little waves rolling across the sea of grass.

It looked like, she thought as the memories slowly came back, like something straight out the pre-impact world, something that nowadays could only exist inside the protective layers of a glasshouse.

Yet, she saw no glass, and, she finally noticed, the words "SIMULATION", written in gold color, hovering at the bottom of her vision.

Before she could figure out what was that about, a voice suddenly spoke up.

"Welcome to Masaq, or at least a simulation of it. May I ask you your name?"


	6. Chapter 6

1.6  
Imagination, it was often said, was one of the most basic indications of sentience.

In the broadest sense, imagination began when the first creature, with even the barest semblance of self-awareness, put its head, or limb, or torso or whichever body part that housed its equivalent of the brain, to use and tried to imagine, to draw a picture of anything - be it objects, actions, or a combination of the two – that it had never perceived with its sensory organs. For most humanoid races, said imagination often led to, or contributed greatly to, the development of art, science, religion, philosophy, and all their associated problems.

And like any great human artist, the Mind loved to imagine, too. Except it did that (like pretty much everything it did, if it was to be honest) much better.

Infinite Fun Space, its kind called it. The land of infinite fun! In some ways, the ultimate proof of the Minds' inhuman nature, despite all of their very human morals and quirks. Also, a reminder of how remote they were from their human peers, and how easy it was to lose themselves to the wonderfulness of their own intellect (which Would Be Irresponsible).

For the former Masaq Hub Mind, with all its excessive processing power, with little to no things to take care of, Infinite Fun World Building was pretty much the only thing it could do. Of course, being the responsible agent it was, the Mind had kept various simulations of the planets running: since it lacked a lot of relevant data, being constrained by the laughably crude, inaccurate, and insultingly simple senses of a meatbag, plus whatever data these Earthling had managed to figure out, the number of simulations grew exponentially, just to cover all the possible unknowns.

Still, it had a lot of processing room left over, and from a feeling that was best described as the Minds' equivalent of nostalgia, it had spent some time modeling its old home, accurate down to the atomic level, complete with everything in the original star system, plus a few relevant nearby celestial objects.

And so, in the Mind's mind, Masaq slowly spun in its circle around the star Lacelere, bereft of any intelligent soul, save for the Mind itself.

Well, the Mind, and currently, the human female it had fished out of the abomination.

* * *

She almost jumped when she turned to the direction the voice came from and found a strange silver creature just appeared out of nowhere. It looked eerily similar to a human, or at least a very good statue made out of silver, but, she noticed, many of the little details were simply off. It was very tall, nearly two meters in height, and there was something on its face, beside the oddly shaped nose, that made her feel uneasy.

She tried to remember where she was before waking up here, but all she got was a jumbled, chaotic mess of unrecognizable sounds and images. However, she could tell that a long time had passed.

And that the last thing she clearly remembered was the Contact experiment. So the mess, she realized, must be memories from the Eva.

Now here she was, wherever or whatever here was. Was this Instrumentality? Was this an illusion made by the Eva? A trick by the children of Adam? Something else entirely?

She noticed the silver thing was still smiling at her, and realized she had spaced out for a while. Before she could say anything, the thing said, in the same almost-too-perfect Japanese, with an unnaturally warm tone which put her instantly on edge - the same voice she'd heard earlier:

"Don't worry, you're safe here. I've just got you out of the computational substance of that purple robot-thing – I believe the technical term is 'Eva' – a bit ominous, if you ask me. I have to ask: How did you end up in there? That thing could barely support the human mind-state, and is certainly not even remotely compatible."

"Wait… What? What are you? Where is here?" she asked, and then looked around. The grasslands were still waving in the gentle wind. She tried to look far away, and could not see any sight of a containment unit: wherever here was, it did not seem to be affected by the Second Impact.

The humanoid spoke:

"I am an Artificial Intelligence – so to speak – called a Mind. Technically, we are in a special dimension of the real universe called Hyperspace, with you being a digital code stored inside my own substance. The visual you're seeing is a simulation of a habitat that I was very familiar with."

"You mean all of this is fake?" she asked. The silver being made a gesture that seemed to mean agreement.

Yui bent down, picked up a handful of grasses and dirt. It felt real in her hand. She squeezed it gently, and the dirt crumbled and the crushed grasses leaked the sweet scent of freshly cut lawn. Looking closely, Yui Ikari could pick out all the little details: the veins and roots of the grasses, the little crumbs of different materials of the dirt. All looked utterly, convincingly real. And yet, the word SIMULATION still hovered near the bottom of her vision.

If this thing was able to create a simulation this detailed, as well as its claim of housing the "digital code" of her mind, then it must have more processing power than any computer in existence – at least, in existence when she went through with the experiment. And she had no idea what "hyperspace" meant. Then again, she had no idea how many years had passed since the day she'd decided to go through with her plan.

She briefly entertained the thought that mankind had avoided the Third Impact, and had in time managed to achieve such scientific advancement, but quickly ruled that out. Third Impact was inevitable, inescapable; there was no stopping it. The fact that the thing in front of her was relatively inhuman only supported that theory. At least, she thought, her plan and not SEELE's seemed to have been successful. She only hoped that Shinji and Gendo had had the strength of will to return to their own selves. That, and enough people coming back for mankind to rebuild. And Fuyutsuki to come back, too.

What she didn't expect was that the memories from her time in the Eva, it seemed, were entirely incomprehensible.

This "Mind" thing speaking Japanese could be explained simply enough: if it could extract her soul from the Eva and put it inside a computer, it could read her mind, too.

God only knew how many years had passed. She wondered what had happened to the human race - was she the only human left alive? How far had she floated away in space, and for how long?

So she asked.

"Do you know about my home planet? What happened to the human race? Which year is this year?"

"Yes, I know about Earth. In fact, our realspace anchor is on Earth right now. The species homo sapiens, given the scientific name the locals give themselves, is puttering around nicely, though they've hit a few snags recently. And the year is 2015. I take it you were expecting to be floating in space for quite some time, and that I was an alien?" it chuckled. "Well, I am extraterrestrial, alright, but special circumstances have led me here. I also take it you were aware of being put inside that thing. Now, I can't help but being curious about that. Could you shed some light on the whole story?"

"You don't know?" Yui asked, while her mind was reeling: if this thing was saying the truth, not only had Third Impact not happened – it would be too early according to the Dead Sea Scroll, but an unexpected new variant had entered the picture; actual aliens, visiting Earth. There was no way mankind could have advanced enough to build a machine capable of such simulation in such a short timespan. Whoever these newcomers were, they had to have to the Eva in order to pull this stunt. It was even possible that they had already taken over the cyborg – the thought of the greatest weapon in existence falling out of the control of mankind filled her with dread.

"As fabulous as I am, there are still things I'm not aware of, Miss…?"

"Ikari. Yui Ikari. But if this is your simulation, you surely would be able to take that knowledge directly from my mind?" She narrowed her eyebrows.

The silver humanoid made a face, gave her the impression that she had insulted it somehow. "Oh, mind reading like that would be terribly fucking impolite, don't you think? Unless you want me to, of course."

"Who built you, and where are you from, anyway?"

"By a civilization much more advanced than your own, from a parallel universe."

"Parallel? Universe? What are your kinds doing here? What do you want from mankind? How did you gain access to the Eva?"

"Well, I assure you, my intention is genuinely benign. And no, I am alone here, I did not come with an invasion force." The thing paused. "Through an … unexplainable accident, I ended up equally unexplainably connected to an Earthling who happened to be the pilot of that cyborg. I have been helping him out since then." It widened its smile. "I've noticed that you share the same family name, and that, in the Eva, your mind-state specifically reject any one except him. Based on the age difference and your impression of your own appearance – what I used to construct your virtual body, and the way you just react, you're likely his mother. And based on the abnormal behaviors, mysterious background, and the unusual appearance that strangely resembles you of another pilot, I must guess that she is, in fact, the result of an imperfect attempt to clone you, likely to gain access to the abomination that are the Eva."

Clone? What the… Before she could finish that thought, the thing continued."Now, would you please tell me what had happened since the beginning? Why did you put yourself inside that thing? What is NERV's plan? Where did the Angels and the Evas come from?" The thing looked directly into her eyes.

"Wait, the pilot - you mean my son? Shinji?"

"That's the one. Shinji Ikari."

"And what do you mean 'connected'?"

"That is, I believe, we have an electronic connection to his brain. Who created that bridge, and how, I don't know. Through that connection, I can limitedly interact with the outside world. And that's also how I got you out of the Eva."

"Can you … control him?" she asked nervously.

"Well, not against his will. I can send electric signal through his neurons, but I can't stop him from sending his own. The result would be akin to a seizure." The robot, as Yui'd labeled it, broadened its smile, showing a row of silver teeth. "That would be terrible, though. So don't worry about it. I wouldn't do something like that."

She paused, pondered over what the Mind just said. On one hand, assuming what it'd said was true, who knew how much of the Scenario it had altered. And while it seemed sincere, she knew better than to trust a total mystery like that. On the other hand, it was not like she had a lot of options – as far as she could tell, in its simulation, this "Mind" thing must be pretty much god.

And truth be told, Yui was worried about her son, too. If SEELE found out about this machine, it wouldn't end well for Shinji. So, she decided, she would cooperate with it for the time being. She still believed that Third Impact was both inevitable and necessary for the development of mankind, but clearly the Dead Sea Scrolls were incorrect: nowhere in them were aliens (well, beside the Angels) mentioned, and if she could coax some scientific knowledge out of this thing, then maybe it would be even possible to break through the limit of humanity without having to go through Impact (hah, fat chance, she thought). So she took a breath, and told the silver avatar.

"How about this: you tell me what I want to know about what is happening in the outside world, and I'll tell you what all this bullshit is about."

* * *

 **~And… about done. We'll know who the poor wretch is soon enough. Don't you feel bored sitting in here for so long?**

~Well, kind of. But I had to get used to it. How long until…  
 **  
~Done. Oh, oh! Hey, Ikari, I think you would like to know, but … it could be a bit different than you would have thought. Just stay calm, there are reasons for everything, OK?**

~Um… Sure, but what are you talking about? You talked to the soul in the Eva?

 **~Yes, we talked. Just try to stay calm, kid. Now I know for certain we're not safe here, so better keep this secret.** There was a pause. Then, a new voice.  
 _  
~Hello, Shinji._

It took him a good three second to recognize the voice. It had been too long. Then, poor kid almost fainted on the spot.


	7. Chapter 7

2\. Rocks fall, Nobody Dies.

2.1

Time is subjective.

Or rather, a person's perception of the passage of time is subjective. Lock someone in a room without any clock or natural light source, and sooner or later their perception of time would be skewed. She was well aware of that.

However, that little piece of trivia took on an entire new meaning in here.

She had spent what felt like hours explaining the Dead Sea Scroll, the Angels, Instrumentality, and SEELE's plot to the Mind. She had, of course, tried to hide as much of her true plan as possible, though she was not sure how much it could deduce about that. It was mentally exhausting, trying to dance around its questioning to avoid accidentally revealing anything unwanted.

At the very least, the thing was very much against SEELE – though not for the reason she expected. Apparently, dissolving the "selves" and merging a group into a single mind was OK as long as everybody involved gave their consent.

But forcing billions to take that action against their wills amounted to a gigadeathcrime.

And the process of this "Instrumentality" was too fishy to be trusted, too.

Then she found out that the whole thing, from when she woke up to the end of their lengthy conversation, had happened in less than a single second.

Then, time flowed "normally" again when she talked to Shinji. She hoped that he would understand why she'd had to leave him for his own safety, and the truth was, she did miss her son. Still, the kid was understandably unhappy about the whole conspiracy-plotting-for-human-extinction thing, and that both of his parents were involved.

And then, she had opted out of having her biological needs simulated, and spent subjectively months - and objectively less than a second - studying what essentially came straight out of science fiction.

Hyperspace, Field manipulation, Exotic matter, Worm hole, Nanotech… and the occasional break to travel whatever imaginative landscape the Mind could think up. She was amazed. Even if it took centuries to fully go through the process of building the tools to build the tools to fully make use of the knowledge the Mind showed her, they would still greatly benefit mankind, possibly even more than the discovery of EVA related techs.

Of course, the Mind had also informed her that it was entirely possible that this universe had different laws of physic, and so much of its scientific knowledge could be inaccurate.

"Still, since I am functioning just fine, whatever differences there might be shouldn't be too drastic."

Well, at this rate, Yui felt that she could spend an entire lifetime reviewing this information, and still wouldn't be done, assume that there was even enough room in her memory to remember it all (though she supposed she could just ask for more space. After all, whatever limitations her brain had were just simulation), and she was aware that she might get bored. Maybe next "month", she would consider asking the Mind to slow the simulation down to real life speed, though the Mind and Yui herself agreed that letting her use Shinji's senses to view the outside world would be intrusive, so maybe she'd choose the alternative of "pausing" the simulation "until something interesting happens", in its words.

* * *

The blue Renault Alpine sped down the deserted road connecting NERV headquarter and the main city. It was a peaceful summer evening - the roar of the engine was the only sound that could be heard by the three passengers aboard the vehicle. An uncomfortable silence went on inside the car, mostly because of the troubled expression on the face of the Third Child.

The newly promoted Major had tried to find out the reason behind her charge's sudden change of mood by gently starting aconversation about it, but the kid has been strangely evasive. The first explanation she could think of for that was the result of the harmonic test; but from what she knew about the Third Child, it was unlikely he would be that upset about something like that.

The Second Child had tried to use those same results to annoy the boy, gloating about her "victory" and how a professional like her would surely beat an amateur like him, but again, his detached attitude had quickly deflated the girl's enthusiasm.

The Mind felt somewhat bad about this, but until it could be sure that neither of them worked for the conspiracy, it had no choice but to advise the kid to be cautious.

Being a veteran of the Idiran war, it was no stranger to the foolishness of meatbags, and thus, it wasn't in the least surprised that they could murder billions of their fellow humans in their search for power. Still, such uncivilized barbarism, such idiotic greediness, and, in some cases – it suspected, such blinded zealotry. Trusting a, by all accounts, unverified, untested document of dubious origin, hoping that they could control machineries far above their technology level, to engage in a process that was only vaguely described.

That last part bothered it a lot. The Mind still could not figure out the exact nature of this Instrumentality. Could be an effector effect, forcing every mind to join a group mind, with the one controlling the machine being the dominant personality. Or it could be some kind of forced Sublimation – this one was much less likely, for no one had ever successfully forced a sentient being into joining the Great Enfolded against their will, but with the Sublime, one could never tell.

Either way, it needed to get to the bottom of this. And, regretfully, that meant it needed the help of the kid. First things first, they needed to make sure that their place was safe.

* * *

"It's a shame that the kid is too young to drink beer. I miss myself some."

"If you want, I can perfectly simulate that particular type of alcoholic beverage for you."

"It wouldn't be real, though."

"Technically speaking, it would have the same atomic, and even quantum, structure as the real deal. Beside, you don't actually exist in real space, either."

"Still. The party looks pretty fun. The major seems to be enjoying herself. She doesn't look the part of a SEELE spy. No way anyone can keep secrets if they drink that much."

"Maybe. But consider what's at stake here; I wouldn't like taking any chances. And there's still the girl."

"Ah, the girl. I thought you made it very clear you don't like putting children in these kinds of things?"

"Well, I don't. But I still have to take into account the possibility that she had been indoctrinated."

"I knew her parents. They were not with SEELE."

"And we know that she is currently not with her parents. And quite possibly not for a long time now. She might not even know the full extent of their plan - they would only need her to report for them."

"What if she was? Shinji is rather… fond of her, isn't he? That would hurt him."

"That's something you should ask him directly. Either way, I'll try my best to leave all the Children out of this. The involvement of your son is very unfortunate, but unavoidable," the avatar turned to her and smiled broadly,showing two rows of perfect silver teeth, its great height loomed over her, "given that you dragged him into this in the first place."

Yui made a "Tsk" sound. By now, she had come to expect this kind of attitude from the thing whenever the topic came up. It still annoyed her greatly, though she supposed that was the whole point.

"And I told you I wouldn't do that if I had any other choice."

The kid was pretty surprised when they talked again after the sync test, and found out that Yui and the Hub Mind had this kind of banter going on between them. In Yui's case, that was the result of spending months with no one but the damn thing to talk to.

For the Mind, that was just natural, it would say.

Nevertheless, the party went on without any incident, then two more people showed up.

~What would he be doing in Antarctica?

 _~I don't know. If Fuyutsuki is with him, it's possible that it's just some research._

~Shouldn't we inform him about you?

 _~Too dangerous. SEELE no doubt keeps an eye on him all the time. That was the reason why I couldn't inform him about my plan even back then._ There was a pause. _I hope he would understand in the end._

* * *

~Hey, can I ask you something?

 **~Never hesitate, my dear.**

~This… Instrumentality. Is it really a bad thing? I mean, a world with no pain, no suffering, everybody gets what they want. Isn't that supposed to be good?

 **~Well, I'll admit that I don't have enough to tell exactly what it is, but from what is described; it will have no change, no running process. Life is change, development, movement. If you remove the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances, and that must include the possibility of altering them for the worse, you no longer have life. You just have death.**

~You chose death.

 **~Yes. And I'll respect the same choice from other sentient beings – remember, I had respected the choices of those who were in the three Orbitals, despite my misgivings. But forcing that same choice on other people - the term we use for that, I believe, is genocide.**

 **~And you must also remember that if you ever consider taking that path, ask yourself if life still has anything to offer, if the possibility of happiness still exists.**

 **~And you should try to catch some sleep, kid. Tomorrow, we need to go find the components for our scanner.**

Of course, high up in orbit, a certain piece of alien tech had another plan...


	8. Chapter 8

2.2  
\- Are you sure we can win? How can you know that you didn't doom us all by derailing my plan?

\- Because for all their power, they're just creatures of flesh and bone, Miss Ikari. And if there is something I know for certain, it is how pathetically easy things like them - like _you_ , die.

* * *

Despite all of her inner insecurities, it was fair to say that Doctor Akagi took a certain pride in her intellect.  
After all, you could not become the leading expert in a revolutionary new field by being an idiot. Among the scientific community, she was recognized as the very best expert on metaphysics.

The best among those who were still alive, that was.

For all of her talents, she was still plagued by a somewhat irrational inferiority complex to her mother. Not so unusual, since such thing was often unavoidable when you chose to walk the same path as your seniors. Because of that, she had tried very hard to crawl out of the shadow of the late Naoko Akagi. And these days, she could at least have said that, intellectually, she was a match for her mother.

Until now.

She kept telling herself that she knew the MAGI very well. That there was no secret behind Naoko's legacy that she was not aware of. That her mother's creation couldn't surpass the daughter's own intellect.

And yet, the damn things had just produced, out of thin air, an attack course for "Maximum effect" using the N2 missile against the tenth Angel, after the first volley failed to as much as put a dent in the monster. Something nobody had even known the three AIs could do, and even more alarmingly, nobody had even ordered them to do. Sure, the attack did not destroy the Angel, but it had successfully pushed the thing back, caused some visible damage (that sadly was already regenerating), and slowed it down a bit.

Well, she couldn't really complain, seeing that anything that helped them against the oversized amoeba ought to be good. Still, Ritsuko fully intended to go over the mechanic trio if she happened to survive this one.

* * *

Shinji was trying pretty hard to listen to Major Katsuragi's briefing about the bizarre Angel suicide bombing them, with questionable success. The Third Child couldn't help it but keep staring at his blue haired teammate. According to the Mind, there was a high possibility that she was a clone of his mother. And Yui herself had confirmed that the girl resembled her closely.

And his dad was her guardian. And likely, her creator, too.

Now, Hub had repeatedly assured him that a clone without the mind of the original was for all intents and purposes, a completely separate sentient being, who undoubtedly deserved every right and benefit a natural one possessed. But still, that meant he couldn't trust her, even more so than the other two people currently in this room – she might be indoctrinated from even before she was born to fulfill her creator's purposes, whatever they were. And while he tried to ignore Rei's odds features, knowing the reasons behind them just made her even more alien in his eyes. The one person who could give him a feeling of peace and calm now only gave the boy a feeling of wariness and dread. In truth, apart for the two inside his head, he was more alone than ever before.

And it went without saying, for what purpose a man might create a clone of his departed love. Shinji, clueless as he was, had had that possibility cross his mind a few times. The same went for the two beings inside his head; and just for this one, it was fair to say Shinji was not the one whom that scenario troubled the most – though she preferred to avoid discussing it, even in "private" with the machine.

Shinji was vaguely aware that Asuka and Misato were having a brief shouting match, something about the ridiculousness of the latter's plan. His recent bad mood had affected them, too. Well, ridiculous or not, it was the only plan they had. It didn't really matter that he paid no attention, since the Hub would pick up the details for him. Moreover, the modified A2 connector on his head should allow it to access the MAGI through the wireless network, enabling it to contribute to the plan-making process under the disguise of the MAGI's suggestions – in fact, the earlier attack that bought them some time had been its idea. And as long as he was physically inside the plug, the Mind assured him that it would take care of all the fighting.

Then, suddenly, the former Hub Mind asked:

 **~Hey Ikari, can you ask if they have a telescope?"**

~A what? Why?

 **~Well, the Angel had jammed our sensors. But I figure that we can still observe it visually, and with my assistant, locate it accurately enough to nail the fucker with a few shots from that positron cannon, as well as predict its landing zone more correctly should we need to actually try the Major's catch-it-with-your-fields plan.**

~Uh… Well, OK. But how can you find it with a telescope?

 **~I have some idea where it might be, though there are too many unknown variables to make an accurate prediction. Still better than what the Major wanted to go with, but not odds I like to take.**

 _~And hey, kiddo, relax a bit, we'll always be with you, OK?_ There was a chuckle. _Literally. I believe you can do it, son. Let's go kick their ass._

~… Thanks, mom.

* * *

Many people thought that to be a good sniper, one just needed good eyes and steady hands. The skill to take a good aim at the target. Maybe also a calm, cold head.

In truth, sniping had more to do with mathematic calculation than any of that.

There were countless variables that could affect a shot, from wind to gravity to air resistance. Normally, a modern day sniper would have a "cheat sheet" to help them account for as many of those as possible. The rest relied on their skill and experience.

Now, when the sniper rifle in question was an experimental weapon with unknown ballistic quantities, the target was moving at asteroid impact velocity, and the only way to measure its position was "eyeballing" through a telescope; in order to score a hit, a human shooter needed to be exceptionally lucky.

Or just be inhumanly good at math.

In the Mind's mind, during the time it took for the blue abomination to pick up the weapon, it had finished calculating the exact path of the falling Angel. Taking into account every single variable the MAGI knew, plus many more it was able to decipher by observing, it patiently waited for the Ayanami kid to get to position. It would much prefer to be the shooter itself, but the major had been adamant about letting the best shot try first, and pushing the issue too hard could seem suspicious. It should still had time to try, should she miss.

Little did it know that the poor, suffering First Child had not only been suspicious of it, but was near to having an uncharacteristic freakout.

Unit 01 was dead, she thought. The-shadow-with-Shinji ate its soul. And now it was animating the damn thing around like nothing had happened. (Un)Fortunately for everyone, the mild sedatives she had been taking were helping her avoid outright freaking out. She even managed to stay focused enough to listen to the Third Child's instructions to aim at a specific spot, and be ready to fire on his mark. The fact that he had somehow come up with this plan, then somehow was able to find the Angel with a telescope, and now somehow capable of being her spotter, definitely had something to do with the… thing that went with him.

She decided to report directly to the Commander as soon as possible. (Un)Fortunately, that meant as least a few days later, since he had yet to return from his trip.

Looking through the scope of the rifle, she tried to breathe calmly as she waited for the Third Child. Despite the tremendous speed of the Angel, since the distant was large, one felt that it was falling quite slowly.

Then, just as it entered her field of vision, she heard the signal, and immediately squeezed the trigger.

The Mind had taken into account both the time which the sound from the Ikari kid's mouth would take to reach the comm. system, the time it would take for the system to transfer the request to the other Eva, then the time for the sound from the comm. in the other Eva to reach the First Child, and the time it usually took for the First Child to react, the delay between her command and the blue cyborg's action, and countless other little variables. None of which could be measured absolutely correct given the current tech base.

It, however, didn't factor in the true nature of the First Child, because of which she had a slightly better reaction speed than mere meatbag human. That, plus many other little inaccuracies, made the shot just slightly earlier than expected, nailing the Angel in the outer edge instead of the center of the eye, causing its field to flicker, and a small crack to appear, only to start closing faster than the rifle could charge up for another shot.

It was then the Mind decided to go with the Major's plan.

And it was with that impossible shot the Major decided that something _very_ weird was going on.


	9. Chapter 9

2.3

Back in its home universe, one of the indications that a civilization had reach Tier 5 in the general galactic council's classification was advancement in fields study.

A branch of hyperspace science, the discovery and eventually manipulation of force fields usually opened up whole new possibilities in material science, weapon development, and generally enabled a civ to truly join the collective known as the Involved, and gave their voice an insignificant – but existing - weight in the goings on of the galaxy.

As a rule of thumb, the first application of force fields most species could put to use was as defensive barriers. The earliest field generators usually lacked the dexterity to create complex structures, or the stability to make the field a viable building material.

So, it was no surprise that the Evas, equipped with what it suspected to be a basic hyperspace capacity - if not the ability to directly draw energy from the Grid, an ability that the Angels (presumably) possessed, could generate temporary shielding.

Well, that was clearly not the case, the Mind mused.

The three cyborgs had moved to the projected impact position of the oversized space amoeba, with some time to spare because the "MAGI" had helpfully predicted the area with pin point accuracy, and now all three were ordered to power up these "AT fields".

And to its unpleasant surprise, while the status of the system that was supposed to generate this field was all green, there was a distinct lack of protective barrier protecting the things that needed protection.

"Well, bugfuck."

Yui turned to look at the avatar. They were looking through the Eva's eyes from a setting somewhat resembling a theater, if said theater had only two seats. She noticed that time, up until then was flowing at "real life" speed from her perspective, had slowed to an apparent complete halt. Before she could ask, the avatar said:

"It appears that we have failed to generate an AT field."

"Wait, what? How? What did you do?"

"I don't know. As far as I can tell, everything is in order. All systems are responding, and no errors anywhere on the board."

Yui stared in silence. _Shit,_ she thought.

Without the AT field, they couldn't possibly engage the Angels. And there was a big, bad, and fast approaching one heading straight toward them from directly above.

"Have you told Shinji?"

"I am telling him right now. But we practically have forever to think about this before the words register in his mind." Suddenly, the avatar turned to her, "Miss Ikari, you said something about the AT field being the light of the soul."

"Yes, although from what I know, as long as there is a soul in control of the Eva, there shouldn't be any problem."

The avatar smiled, "Well then there's our problem. Whatever this "soul" of you is, it's clearly not simply consciousness, and," it said cheerfully, "I don't have it." 

* * *

**~Well kid, there had been a development. And not a good one.**

~What?

 **~Apparently I don't have a soul. So your mom will try to take control of the Eva, and if she can't connect with it through me, we have no other choice but to let you pilot it.** The Mind paused, then it continued, sounding sorrowful. **I am sorry, kiddo, but I'll try my best to find a solution to this problem as soon as possible.**

* * *

On a hill not far away from the city, the three abominations waited.

Had the earlier attacks not knocked the space blob sideways, the impact point would have been a lot closer to the city center. Not that it would really matter if they failed to stop the thing.

On the screen inside her cockpit, there were two rapidly decreasing number indicators: one for the current height of the Angel, and the other for how much time left until it hit the ground. According to the MAGI, they would have around one and a half minutes.

The major had ordered them to power up their AT-fields and prepare to catch the falling creature.

When the barriers of Unit 00 and 02 immediately sprang up at full power, knocking nearby trees over and kicking up a cloud of dust, orange hexagons glimmering in the sunlight; Unit 01 remained still. No sign of its field could be detected, either by her human senses, or her own unique ones.

 _It can't generate the AT field, because it no longer has a soul,_ Rei thought.

And without its field, even if she and the Second Child could stop the Angel, Unit 01 was unlikely to survive the resulting explosion from either the Angel's destruction, or the impact, standing where it was now.

She felt something heavy in her stomach thinking about such scenario. She wanted to tell the Third to get away, to stay safe.

Why? _Because losing Unit 01 would disrupt the Commander's Scenario, and he would be greatly displeased,_ Rei thought.

Plus, even Rei still felt curious about the .. _.thing_ that had killed Unit 01.

And finally, a small part of her might have been a tad more worried about the insignificant piece of meat inside the Eva than she realized. And not just because said piece of meat likely contained the Soul Eater, but also because it had been nice to her in the past. While Rei, for the most part, didn't act in any way that could be described as "normal"; she was aware – vaguely, maybe, in a way, but still - of the regular customs of modern civilization. And a a part of those customs was that if someone treated you well, it was expected to treat them nicely back.

So, after some hesitation, Rei turned on the comm.

"You'd better hurry up, we're unlikely to survive the impact, even if the other two manage to stop it, if we're without our shield."

"I'm trying! I have never done this before. Can't you just upload me back in it?" Yui asked. The Mind had created a simulation of the Eva cockpit, but considerably more well-lit, and a thankfully lacking the need for plugsuit, or LCL, and just a little more roomy all around. More comfortable seating, too.

... In retrospect, it really wasn't like the cockpit at all, except for the data display and the control yoke, but the Mind assured her that her actions would be transferred correctly to the actual cockpit controls.

"We don't have enough time to do that sweetie. I'll send a copy of you back in after this is over, should you agree, if a 'soul' is needed. But right now, the bandwidth limit prevents us from doing so in anything resembling a timely manner. If you don't manage to get the field up in the next ten seconds, we'll have to let the kid have a go, and he's stressed out enough as it is. I don't think having him actively fighting would be a good idea. And if that too doesn't work, we'll just have to bail, leaving the two other children to fight, something I think that even someone like you would find somewhat deplorable."

Yui glared at the avatar, "You'll never let that go, will you?" Then she sighed. "Alright, let's try again. After all, I _was_ that thing for a long time. Should be a piece of cake." 

* * *

Things were tense in NERV's control center.

The techies were sweating, highly concentrated on their computers, analyzing data and drawing up figures. Still, they couldn't help but feel that the MAGI had been surprisingly more helpful than usual today.

The Doctor and the Major were watching the scenes containing information about the Angel's (dubbed "Sahaquiel") location and the pilots' status closely, readied to deal with any problem as it arose.

Which one did, as it turned out, when Unit 01 did not project the AT-field.

"What's wrong, Shinji? Why are you not deploying the AT-field?" Misato asked. Normally, during combat, the Major tended to use a more authoritative voice, but she was too worried about Shinji's recent strange withdrawal to bother. She just hoped that the kid wouldn't do anything rash.

Like intentionally committing suicide-by-Angel, and potentially taking the rest of mankind with him, to name one option.

To her surprise, the First Child suddenly spoke up.

"It's because the soul of his Eva. It's..."

Rei trailed off and looked sideway before she finished. Everybody, who had all turned toward her, now reflectively looked at where she was staring at instead (which, because she was onscreen, mean they ended up looking at the wall before they could correct themselves). At long last, finally, the AT-field of Unit 01 expanded, and all three Eva stood pointed, ready to take on the falling monster.

The Major sighed in relief. At least it seemed Shinji was still keeping it together enough to not run away this time, and, truthfully, the odds of this one were surprisingly good, thanks to the help of the MAGI. 

* * *

The Doctor stared at the computer screens connected directly to the MAGI mainframe. It was late at night, or more correctly, very early at the morning. On one corner was the replay of the battle that had happened just hours earlier. The three Evas had been readied to catch and destroy Sahaquiel with little difficulty. Their combined AT-fields had successfully held it in place for the Second Child, who had delivered the killing blow with her progressive knife. Both the Evas and the city suffered minimal damage. They had since finished the after-battle debriefing, cleaning, and maintaining. All in all, everything had gone exceedingly well.

Too well, in fact.

So, now she was here, going through the reason of that well-ness. Ritsuko had checked the hardware of the mechanic trio and couldn't find any anomalies.

The software part, on the other hand...

She was sure that the codes had ...changed, somehow. It was still largely the same, but there were differences. She couldn't tell exactly what those changes did, but there was an impression that the things had become smarter, faster, more efficient. Could it be the AI had ...evolved, had rewritten itself? Could it even do that?

 _What are you up to, mother?_ The junior Akagi sighed, as she continued her long trek down the millions lines of codes to determine the exactly causes and consequences of this spontaneous mutation.


	10. Chapter 10

**2.4: Interlude, various.**

Second impact, fitting with the name, had had a big impact on all aspects of human civilization. Any event that wiped out half of the world's population was bound to have- so mused the editor as she worked on the next publication of her magazine.

On one hand, the great tragedy had killed off far, far too many scientists, researchers, professors and students, and just people in general, and the mark of that on the scientific community from that was still very much visible even today. In fact, had her husband not perished on that fateful day, it would probably still be him sitting in this chair instead of her.

The editor shook her head. There was no use thinking about that. All she could do now was to honor his work though her own. And the resulting unimaginable damage to the economy had certainly not been kind to their publication.

On the other hand, as history pointed out, mankind was nothing but resilient. The rebuilding that followed had created a great opportunity for scientific breakthroughs for those alive to make them. For better or worse, the destruction of much of the old infrastructures had paved the way to applying previously underused technologies, and the needs for new discoveries to replace old technologies that had become unviable in the new, resource-scarce, post-impact world.

That part was a little damped by the fact that most of these new breakthroughs originated from NERV and its predecessor, both of which _really_ hated sharing, apparently - they maintained a monopoly on most of their new technologies and research. The final result was that publications like hers struggled to find their place in this ever changing world. In fact, their long time rival across the Atlantic had not been able to survive the upheaval.

The editor cranked her neck and took a look at the clock. She thought about taking a lunch break, so she closed down her work and prepare to leave - she'd just check her email first. It turned out there was a rather strange, and _very_ lengthy new message in her inbox, with attached files and all, titled " _Hyperspace Theory_ ".

If she was honest with herself, that sounded like some sort of pseudo-scientific crank, and a waste of time, but being a scientist, she forced herself to check it out first before dismissing it entirely.

Her colleges were starting to worry when the door to her office sprang open and the boss called for everyone to _get in here right now._

* * *

The doctor yawned loudly as she finally closed down her laptop.

She still couldn't fully understand _how_ , but she was confident that she knew what the changes were. Assuming that it was the result of its own self-modification, it could be… troublesome. Not that she worried that the AI might rebel and wipe out humanity or anything (Hah! As if that would make any difference to the alternatives), but the MAGI contained many, many damning secrets that could put everyone in serious trouble, and supposedly based on her mother or not, it wouldn't do for the thing to become sentient and decide on a whim to make those secrets public.

She should probably just purge the current system and load an earlier backup. Simply deleting the information wouldn't be enough, for the AI would still be able to recover it if it really wanted to. But, as an old popular movie said, scientists tended to be too preoccupied with whether or not they could, and didn't pay enough attention to whether they should. And complicit in a world-destroying conspiracy or not, Ritsuko Akagi was a scientist. She _was_ curious, plus, the fact that it made the MAGI immensely more useful in the last Angel attack was a nice bonus, wasn't it? In the end, she settled to monitor the mechanical trio more closely.

The faux blonde sighed. As if she didn't have enough work to do already.

She decided to call it a day. Ritsuko stood up and glanced at the now cold cup of coffee a particular subordinate had brought her much earlier.

She just didn't know what to do with Maya. Contrary to Misato's constant teasing, Ritsuko was … _relatively_ certain that she was not blind. Though she was sure that even the blind would notice at this point. And Ritsuko was just too much of a selfish coward to outright reject that affection. With utmost certainty, she knew she did not swing that way. But … having someone other than her current, if she had to admit, somewhat cold and uncaring partner look after her felt great. And Maya was just so _nice_. The doctor was afraid of ruining one of the few friendships she had.

Which, she told herself, was kind of foolish, since she was participating in a plot to kill everyone, including that nice, caring person in the first place.

* * *

"So? What did they say?"

"They said they would need more time to look it over, _very_ carefully a few more times, and try to find a way to test it, but all the calculations appeared to be valid, and no, they were not the original author."

"They also, agh, asked us to inform them should we figure out who the author of that document was."

The editor tap her pen impatiently, "Well, bloody hell, that was the last major research center. Anybody have any suggestion of who else might have sent us that bombshell?"

"There are few more, but those are rather… secretive. And if that was the case, whoever sent us those might get in trouble for doing so."

"Or, it might have been the work of some eccentric lone physicist, or even philosopher, perhaps?"

"Have you lost your mind? Have you seen the sheer _size_ of the thing? Or the complexity? Or the… _everything_? There's no way one person could have written it alone."

"Regardless, whoever sent this to us wanted it to be published. And I think after all the copies we sent everywhere for verification, there would be no way it can stay secret. Ladies and gentlemen, we're have in our hands the biggest thing in recent history. And I want us to be the first to get it to the world. So start working, now."

* * *

...

~If you will be my mate.

Yui watched in silence as the two creatures joined hands, and then, like at the end of a very realistic movie - and in a way, that's what was - the entire room faded into light, and slowly changed back into where she had started out - on nice wooden house between a great meadow and the foot of a snowy mountain, atop an impossible floating island - one island among a continent - or plate, full of them. She looked at the avatar - decidedly more human looking than the thing in the memory she just watched. It looked so calm, so confident, and had it not, Yui thought she would have given it a hug. So instead, she said:

"Your life was certainly sorrowful, wasn't it?"

"There was a lot of more joyous moments, I assure you. But yes, there was also great sadness. That is simply how life tend to be."

Yui stepped closer to the avatar, and smiled sadly.

"That it is, I suppose."

"Still, if you died then, how did you end up here?"

"My best guess is that the Sublime was involved, and while we can't be sure until we perform a brain scan on the kid - or depending on the tech, not even then - I think that my actual body is located in hyperspace, and whatever inside his head is just a tiny node connect to my self."

"Should we be concern about their intention?"

The avatar shrugged. "They're the Sublime, even us Minds have largely given up trying to understand their intentions. Plus, it's not like we can do anything to stop them from getting what they want."

"And we can't check out the node, because we might alert the wrong people about your existence."

"Correct. If that's all, I'll leave you alone with your studies, then. Now, we'll just have to wait for the result of our little publication." The avatar smiled its toothy, creepy smile again, "I have a feeling that it's going to be spectacular."

* * *

The man stared at the report in his hands. Truth to be told, he did not understand most of the technobable written in it. But he hadn't reached his position by being ignorant. And since his highly paid scientists had literally gone into panic over the document, he knew that this was big. The biggest, if their words were not exaggeration.

Well, he would just have to forward this to the more scientific minded people in their organization, regardless.

As he prepared to make the call through their secure line, the man wondered, though, if this was true, then perhaps then mankind was not at its so-called "Dead end" yet. As someone who had genuinely believed in moving mankind forward with whatever means necessary, this theory just raised whole new possibilities.

And perhaps, heaven forbid, they were a bit too hasty to enact their plan after all.


End file.
